Friday, August 26, 2011

i dont really need to pick up a new hobby, but whatever - i just bought a ukulele! i love it so far, but my fingers are yelling at me and i'm a bit annoyed at how quickly it falls out of tune. hopefully my skin will toughen up soon and i'll figure out how the little instrument works!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

a tim tam is a very popular and tasty australian biscuit/cookie composed of two layers of chocolate malted biscuit that surround a chocolatey cream filling, and completely covered in a thin layer of chocolate.

the packaging is unique in that each biscuit ("biccie" in aussie slang) has its own little compartment and there are precisely 11 biscuits per package.

i have developed a tim tam habit while observing at the australian astronomical observatory. very early in the morning, when i start to get sleepy and exhausted from working all night, i like to perform a tim tam slam (or two) to help me stay awake (and because they are so yummy)!!

to perform a tim tam slam, you need a tim tam and a mug of hot beverage such as coffee, tea or hot chocolate.

first, take small bites off opposite corners of the tim tam, or daintily bite off both ends (my preferred method).

the next few steps happen in rapid succession, so get ready...

hold the tim tam tight between your fingers and place one of the nibbled off bits in your mouth. submerge the other side in the beverage and suck, suck, suck!

as soon as you get the *hit* of liquid through the tim tam straw, pop it directly into your mouth!

if you wait too long, the whole thing turns into sludge and can easily drop out of your hand, so its best to eat it quickly.

every time i do the slam, it tastes better than i expect :)

UPDATE: in response to this post, some fine fellas in cardiff decided to demonstrate a similar technique using a twix, which they call tea-twix-tubes!

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

in order to advertise a german horror TV channel, a group designed a series of bowling balls that look like chopped off heads which they are calling 13th Street Bowlingheads. spray paint artist Oliver Paaß helped to make them look fairly convincing! they put these bowling balls (and a few other designs) in several bowling alleys around germany...

juno will arrive at jupiter in july 2016 in order to study many still mysterious aspects of the giant planet's existence. astronomers are hoping juno will help our understanding of whether jupiter has a solid core, how much water and ammonia are deep in jupiter's atmosphere, what exactly jupiter's strong magnetic fields look like, and observe jupiter's auroras in detail.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

i'm out at siding springs observatory again this week hanging out with some telescopes and kangaroos. this first night of observing has been a hectic one, getting the quirks of the telescope worked out and debugging some new code issues.

luckily, things are running mostly smoothly now, we are collecting spectra of 400 galaxies each hour, and a fellow observer managed to get outside for a few minutes to capture this lovely image of the milky way laying across the night sky :)